By Grant McGee
It was that summer I was 18. It was between my freshman and sophomore year in college. I was too immature to be in college, but I didn’t know that at the time.
I had an internship in the news department at the local TV station that summer. I was too immature to have an internship, but I didn’t know that at the time either.
I had a day off so I decided to go for a country ramble in my old 1965 Ford Falcon. I was going alone, no girl by my side because I really didn’t know much about girls at that time either. For instance, I certainly wouldn’t be hanging around with that laid back hippie-type chick who was interning at the TV station with me. She and I were talking in the newsroom, the conversation was going well when I passed gas. I thought she wouldn’t notice but all of a sudden she crossed her eyes, scrunched up her face and said, “Oh my GOD.” The conversation abruptly ended, she got up and left the room. We didn’t have any more real good conversations after that.
So there I found myself on the far west side of town on a lazy summer day when I looked up at the nearby mountaintop and remembered the tower for the TV station was way up there. From my Boy Scoutin’ days I remembered how to get to the road that wound its way to the top.
So I followed the asphalt until it ran out, I followed the dirt road until it became a two-track fire trail through the Jefferson National Forest.
I never gave fire trails a second thought when it came to rambling in my old Ford “Falcoon.” The Boy Scout in me would’ve rather’ve had an old Jeep or a Rambler American or an old Checker cab but I was blessed with the Falcoon and the two of us were okay in the mountains.
Up, up, up the trail went. I was taking it slow, easing up the mountain. Around this bend, past that switchback, up, up, up.
I rounded another bend and was surprised to see a parked car up ahead on the fire trail, here, halfway up the mountain in the middle of the national forest.
It was a newer car than mine, a Chevy two-door. There was a woman sitting on the hood. There was a man with his shirt off standing in front of the woman between her knees. She had her arms draped over his shoulders. Even from a few hundred feet away I could see they had been locked in a kiss as I came around the bend.
As I trundled up the fire trail getting closer and closer the man and woman remained as they were, she on the hood, he standing between her knees, her arms draped over his shoulders. And they were talking.
I got closer and closer and realized I knew the woman.
It was Mrs. Stimpson* from back in my grandmother’s neighborhood. Mrs. Stimpson lived right across the street from my grandmother’s house.
With Mr. Stimpson.
And that wasn’t Mr. Stimpson standing shirtless in front of her between her knees.
Mrs. Stimpson was Kevin Stimpson’s mom. At that moment in time Kevin was in the Navy. Six years in the future he would be dead, shot between the eyes by another Navy guy he shared an apartment with.
Mr. Stimpson was retired Navy, a cook. He was a grumpy old man. One day years before while Kevin and I were running our toy trucks in the dirt in front of his house Mr. Stimpson, apropos of nothing, said, “Come on boys, let’s go for a ride.” He took us down to the city jail and gave us a tour. He had access to the jail because he was a city magistrate. Why he took the two of us on a sudden, impromptu tour of the bad-ass city jail was lost on Kevin and me. We walked by the cells getting catcalls and whistles from the prisoners. “What did you do?” I whispered to Kevin.
“I don’t know,” said Kevin.
At the end of the tour Mr. Stimpson said, “Now you boys see that you never want to be in this place.”
Then he drove us home.
We resumed playing with our toy trucks in the dirt in front of Kevin’s house.
Another time Mr. Stimpson yanked us in from playing outside to watch a movie produced by The Navy that warned of the dangers of taking LSD. It was like one of those junior high school health class films. The movie was full of bright colors. Hapless druggies came to bad ends, like the poor ol’ gal who burned her hand because in her LSD-addled mind she thought the blue flame on the gas stove was a pretty blue flower.
“Now you boys know never to mess with that stuff,” proclaimed Mr. Stimpson.
“Yes sir,” Kevin and I nodded in agreement.
Then we went back outside and went on playing with our tiny trucks in the dirt in front of Kevin’s house.
But Mrs. Stimpson never said much. She seemed to always be in the kitchen. She was a rosy-cheeked roundish woman who smiled a lot. But Mrs. Stimpson never said much.
And here she was on the side of the mountain kissing on a strange shirtless man who was standing between her knees.
As I drove by with my window rolled down I lifted my hand, smiled and simply said, “Hello.”
All I could say of the look on Mrs. Stimpson’s face was that she seemed unnaturally white and her eyes seemed to be opened as wide as those big, ol’ early 1900’s-type silver dollars.
The man turned and gave me an upward head flick of acknowledgement.
I kept driving and said nothing else.
I made it to the top of the mountain, to the TV station’s transmitter site and shook hands with the lone TV engineer who manned the place, but the wonder of the trip was clouded by the mystery of seeing Mrs. Stimpson in an intimate moment in the middle of the woods with a man that was not Mr. Stimpson.
I was old enough to understand people did such things but still too immature to fully understand why.
I never told another soul what I saw on the mountainside that summer day long ago.
I was mature enough to know that.
-30-
*Names changed.
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